Alexander (Vol. 3) (Alexander Trilogy) (56 page)

Stateira had arrived from Ecbatana two days previously and she took part in the ceremony as a lady-in-waiting to her sister Barsine, born of Darius’s first marriage. When the time came to retire, she accompanied her as far as the threshold of the bedchamber where her new husband was due to join her. Alexander arrived before Stateira had left and she greeted him with a kiss.

‘I am happy you have come, Stateira. It has been a long time since we last saw each other.’

‘This is true, my Lord, it has been a long time.’

‘I hope you are well.’

‘I am fine,’ replied Stateira with an enigmatic smile, ‘but I find myself wondering just how well you are.’

‘Perhaps I’ve had a bit too much to drink,’ replied Alexander, ‘but on a night like this the wine can only do me good.’

‘Quite. An almost thirty-year-old virgin and a wife you haven’t seen for almost four years are both desirous of your services.’

Alexander seemed to reflect for a moment on these words before he murmured, ‘How time flies.’

Then he approached her, looked her straight in the eyes and asked, ‘Have you come to offer me your love, or to challenge me?’

‘To challenge you? Why should I? I will wait in the room next door while you make my sister happy – she is the newly wed and she has every right to the prime of your strength,’ replied Stateira with the most inviting of smiles. She gave him a kiss and then retired to her room, closing the door behind her.

The King slept with both of his Persian wives that night, first with Barsine and then with Stateira, but when Stateira had fallen asleep, he covered her with a
chlamys
and went out into the corridor. He looked around and saw that everything was quiet, then he went down the stairs, walked across the courtyard and went to Roxane in the royal apartments. He tried not to make any noise, but when he lay down alongside her, she turned suddenly and lashed out like a fury, throwing punches and scratching him with her nails. ‘You still smell of that woman and you dare come near me!’ she shouted.

Alexander grabbed her wrists and pinned her down on the bed. She wriggled and twisted and panted beneath him, but Alexander said nothing. He let her shout and then cry disconsolately for as long as it took. In the end he let her go and he lay down alongside her once more, waiting for all her wrath and her pain to subside.

‘I’ll go if you want me to,’ he said.

Roxane did not reply.

‘I had explained to you that I was going to marry Barsine and that Stateira was to return. A king has certain duties—’

‘But that makes no difference!’ shouted Roxane. ‘Do you think the fact it’s your duty makes me feel any better?’

‘No, I don’t think that,’ replied Alexander. ‘That’s why I asked you if you want me to leave.’

‘And you really would go?’ she asked.

‘Only if you wanted me to,’ replied the King, ‘but I hope you don’t ask me to because you are the only woman I will love for the rest of my days.’

Roxane was silent for a long time, then she said,
‘Alexandre

‘Yes.’

‘If you do it again I will kill myself, and your child will die together with me. I am pregnant.’

Alexander held her hand firmly, in silence, in the dark.

*

On the following day the King announced that he personally would clear the debts of all those Macedonian soldiers who had borrowed money. Initially many of them did not dare report their debts because they thought that Alexander had worked out a plan to identify all those who had squandered their resources or who had not managed to get by on the generous pay they all received.

Alexander, on seeing that there were so few requests, spread word that he did not wish to know the identities of the debtors, but only the amount of the debt, and thus they all took heart and presented Eumenes with their applications and the documents proving the existence of the loans; in return they were issued with the monies necessary to clear the debt in full.

The Secretary General calculated the total cost of this operation at ten thousand talents.

Towards the end of the spring the King held manoeuvres at Opis, along the Tigris, where a new contingent of thirty thousand young Persian men had joined the army, all of them trained after the Macedonian fashion. There was a great parade in which the young Asian warriors, called the Successors, proved themselves to be exceptionally valiant and skilful. This irritated the Macedonian soldiers once again, who feared they might be put at the same level as those they had defeated and conquered on the battlefield. Their disappointment further increased when they heard that Alexander wanted to dismiss all the invalids and the wounded and send them all back, together with Craterus who was to substitute old Antipater as regent of Macedon.

‘They are furious,’ Craterus said to him. ‘They are asking you to receive a delegation.’

The manoeuvres had finished and the young Successors had returned to their tents. Alexander had his throne brought out and said to his friend, ‘Have them come to me.’ It was clear that he was extremely angry and in a terrible mood.

Craterus moved off towards the Macedonian camp, which was clearly separated from the Persian camp, and not long afterwards there appeared a small company of soldiers representing the various divisions of the army: cavalry, heavy infantry, assault troops, shieldsmen, horseback archers.

‘What do you want?’ asked Alexander, coldly.

‘Is it true that you are sending home the veterans, the disabled, the maimed?’ asked the commander of an infantry division, the oldest of the group.

‘Yes,’ replied the King.

‘And you feel this is the right thing to do?’

‘It is the necessary thing. There will be further expeditions and these men are no longer fit to fight.’

‘What sort of a man are you?’ shouted another. ‘Now that you have these little barbarians all dressed like young girls doing their exercises and their pirouettes, you don’t need your soldiers any more, the soldiers who conquered half the world for you with their sweat and their blood.’

‘It’s true!’ exclaimed a third man. ‘You plan on sending them back home now, but in what state? Are they the same men they were when you took them from their families ten years ago? No! Back then they were young and strong, in perfect shape! Now they are exhausted, emptied, wounded, maimed, invalids. What will their lives be like? And what about those who will never come back now? Those who died in the ambushes, who froze to death in the winters, who were smashed to pieces against the rocks, drowned in the muddy waters of the Indus, devoured by crocodiles, bitten by snakes, killed by thirst and hunger in the desert. Have you thought about them? Have you thought about the widows and the orphans? No, Sire, you obviously haven’t, otherwise you would never have conceived an action of this kind. We have always listened to you, we have always obeyed you, but now you must listen to us! We, your soldiers, have met together in an assembly and we have decided. Either all of us, or none of us!’

‘What are you trying to say?’ asked Alexander, his face darkening.

‘What I mean is,’ replied the infantry division commander, ‘if you send the invalid veterans back then you will have to send us all back. Yes, we are going home. You can keep your barbarians with their fine gold-plated breastplates and we will see if they’re capable of doing as much for you as we have done, if they can sweat blood for you in the same way we have. Farewell, Sire.’

The small group of men bowed their heads slightly, then turned their backs and slow-marched back to the camp.

Alexander got to his feet, his face pale with rage and humiliation and he turned to the horsemen of his personal guard, ‘Is this the way you see things as well?’

The commander was silent.

‘Do you feel the same way?’ he shouted once more.

We agree with our companions, Sire,’ came the reply.

‘Then you may go. You are relieved of your duties – I no longer have any need of you.’

The commander nodded to indicate that he had understood, then he gathered his men and took them to the camp at a gallop.

Shortly afterwards their place was taken by a group of Persian Successors who from that moment onwards were on full display outside the royal tent, resplendent in their new armour and their embroidered gowns, their purple and gold standards.

For two days Alexander refused to see his soldiers, neither did he communicate to them what he intended to do, but in the camp his gesture had thrown everyone into a state of considerable worry. They felt now like a flock of sheep without a shepherd, like children without a father, alone in the heart of a limitless land they had conquered, but which now threatened and derided them. And stronger than all these feelings was one other: the pain that came from having been excluded from the presence of their king, the thought that he was now making other plans, dreaming other dreams, conceiving of extraordinary adventures without them, the pain of not seeing him any more, of no longer having any contact with him, no relationship whatsoever.

Two days went by and the King did not show his face. On the third day some soldiers said, ‘We’ve made a mistake. It was the wrong thing to do. After all, he has always loved us, he has gone through our hardships with us, he ate as we ate, he was wounded more than any of us, he has heaped gifts and favours on us. Let us go to his tent and beg his pardon.’

Others started laughing, ‘Yes! That’s it! Off you go and have your backsides kicked for your trouble!’

‘Perhaps,’ replied the man who had spoken first, ‘but I will go anyway; you do whatever you want.’ He took off all his weapons and wearing only his
chiton,
and, barefoot, he walked out of the camp. Others followed his example, increasing in numbers until more than half the army were there before the royal pavilion under the astonished gaze of the Persian guards.

Just at that moment Craterus passed by and saw them standing there. Ptolemy, who had returned from a mission along the Tigris, asked, ‘What’s happening here?’

They entered the tent and Craterus said, ‘The men are outside,
Alexandre.’

They heard a voice cry out, ‘Forgive us, Sire!’

‘I hear them,’ replied Alexander, apparently impassible.

‘Alexander! Listen to us!’ cried another voice.

Ptolemy could not manage to hide his emotions. ‘Why don’t you go to them? They are your soldiers.’

‘Not any longer. I was not the one who rejected them – they rejected me. They failed me.’

Ptolemy added nothing else – he knew his friend too well to insist at that moment.

Another day and night and then another day went by and the soldiers’ laments grew louder, their voices ever more insistent.

‘That’s enough now!’ shouted Ptolemy. ‘Enough! Those men have neither slept nor eaten for two days and two nights. If you are a man, go to them now! Is it truly so difficult for you to understand them? You are a king, you know everything of the workings of governments and politics, but they know only one thing: they have followed you to the ends of the earth, they have given blood for you and now you send them away and surround yourself with the very people you had asked them to fight against up until yesterday. Can you really not understand how they feel? Do you really think the money you have given them is any just compensation?’

Something in Alexander seemed to stir and he looked Ptolemy in the face, as though hearing these words for the very first time. Then he stood up and walked out, while the light of day was gradually fading away.

The entire army was out there – thousands of unarmed soldiers, sitting on the dusty ground, many of them in tears.

‘I have heard you, men!’ he shouted. ‘Do you think I am deaf? I have not slept for two nights because of you.’

‘Neither have we slept for two nights, Sire!’ replied an anonymous voice in the midst of the group.

‘Because you are ingrates, because you failed to understand me, because . . .’ Alexander started shouting.

A veteran soldier, with one hand missing and with a grey beard and long ruffled hair moved forward and looked Alexander square in the eyes, ‘Because we love you, son,’ he said.

Alexander bit his lip, realizing that at any moment he might start crying like a baby, he himself, King of Macedon, King of Kings, Pharaoh of Egypt, Sovereign of Babylon, was about to cry like a stupid little boy before his soldiers. And he did. Burning tears, shameless, without even covering his face. When he had finally calmed down, he replied, ‘I love you too, you bastards!’

A
LEXANDER
,
SITTING ON
his throne on the podium, looked at the soldiers who had been summoned before him by the trumpets. Then he nodded to Eumenes, the signal for the Secretary General to start reading: